1. Grim Dawn Classes
2. Grim Dawn Vitality Damage Constellations

• Grim Dawn Somehow even grimmer. Roll was when I was playing my Witch Hunter(dual wield poison dmg) and I got 3(!) legendary drops that were all vitality dmg specific. A chest piece and two matching swords combining for 350% vit dmg. Shaman + Constellations mean you can have piles of temporary pets. 3DS Friends: 1693-1781-7023.
• 14 Constellations – Unleash the might of the Arkovian Gods with 14 new Devotion Constellations that open up even more combinations in Grim Dawn’s massive constellation map. Collect Hundreds of New Items – Dozens of new Monster Infrequents and Hundreds of Epic and Legendary items are waiting to be added to your collection!
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• May 18, 2018  Grim Dawn - The best way to level your alts ( Saving time on new characters ). Grim Dawn INSANE DAMAGE Vitality Ritualist - Duration: 20:21. SinnfullDuck 68,965 views.

Vitality damage is one type of damage in grim dawn. There are devotions that support vitality - bats, gallow, rattosh, typhos, dying god. It usually comes in 2 flavors, vitality/chaos (occultist) and vitality/aether (necromancer). The problem of every damage type is to find resistance reduction.

Shifting away from the typical high fantasy setting to a Lovecraftian post-apocalyptic horror world, Grim Dawnis everything an ARPG fanatic could want from a proper Diablo 2-style game.

Besides the dark setting, what further sets Grim Dawn apart from the pack is in the dual class mastery system, which lets you tinker with dozens of possible class combinations.

While it's possible to run a pure single class (focusing on the mastery bar and fully upgrading specific skills), frankly it's more fun to try to find a dual class that works by meshing together opposing skill combos.

We've listed out every possible Grim Dawn class combination in the chart below, followed by a closer look at some of the most powerful (or fun to play) mastery combinations available.

Grim Dawn Class Combinations

If you find specific skills aren't working with your class build or you want to try a different path down the skill trees, don't forget you can un-learn skills at a spirit guide (in Devil's Crossing, the spirit guide Sadhina is found in the top corner of the prison area).

Arcanist

Of all the classes, Arcanist is among the best for going the pure single class route. While the front-line fighters tend to do very well in ARPGs, my first class of choice is always the dedicated spellcaster. That's what you get with the Arcanist, who begins the skill tree with a D&D style magic missile spell named Panetti's Replicating Missile (PRM).

PRM can take you far in this game if you fully upgrade that entire branch of the skill tree with Distortion, Supercharged, and Proliferation. Make sure to pick gear and constellation devotion points that increases your elemental and Aether damage to maximize your Arcanist's DPS.

An Arcanist focused on PRM tends to not do as well on Ultimate difficulty, however, so if you are planning on doing more than just play the story, you may want to pick a different base class.

Arcanist Class

Battlemage (Arcanist + Soldier)

If you want a dual class, adding Soldier and solely focusing on Military Conditioning and Veterancy can increase your health and defensive capabilties for when your ranged Arcanist abilities run out.

Don't forget Mirror of Ereoctes and Maiven's Sphere Of Protection on the Arcanist side for the defensive boosts.

Sorcerer (Arcanist + Demolitionist)

If you like to make things burn and explode, this is the class combo for you! To get the most out of the class, put a bunch of points into Elemental Balance on the Arcanist side to greatly increase your flaming attacks.

The vast majority of your skill points should be focused on the Demolitionist side, with the obvious choices being Flame Touched and then the entire Fire Strike through Brimstone path. Taking this route will result in large amounts of fire damage with your normal weapon attack. Flashbang is also a solid utility skill to take for breaking up crowds and debuffing enemies.

Demolitionist

The fire counterpart to the Arcanist's ice and lightning, the Demolitionist is actually less of a spellcaster and more focused on dealing fire damage with ranged or melee weapon attacks. For good measure, he also has some stunning capabilities and area of effect fire bomb attacks.

Demolitionist Class

Saboteur (Demolitionist + Nightblade)

This is a fun class for combining the fiery mayhem of the Demolitionist with the fast paced, two-weapon style of the Nightblade. If you want to keep the flavor of the Nightblade, of course focus on the Dual Blades, Belgothian's Shears, and Amarasta's Quick Cut skills, as those let you deal loads of damage with two weapons.

Here's where the Demolitonist flavor comes in: pump a full 12 skill points into Vindictive Flame, and toggle it on whenever possible. This not only increases your already impressive speed, but also heals you while you deal extra fire damage. You will be an absolute whirlwind of flaming blades, scything through hordes of enemies.

Pyromancer (Demolitionist + Occultist)

While the Occultist has great debuffs – and you should pick up some of those – the real draw here is combining the Solael's Witchfire skill (which deals bonus chaos damage and increases your attack speed) with the Demolitonist's Fire Strike attack. The Occultist's Frailty skill works very well in tandem with the Demoltionist's fire-based attacks as well, since Frailty reduces an enemy's elemental resistances.

Nightblade

For dual-wielding enthusiasts, this is the class you want to pick first. He can become an absolute blur of motion across the screen, and adding a second class means you'll be augmenting your double melee strikes with additional status effects or elemental damage.

Nightblade Class

Witchhunter (Nightblade + Occultist)

There are several distinctly different directions to take this combo class, but one that offers some interesting opportunities earlier on is to focus on bleeding damage. Taking Phantasmal Blades and Anatomy Of Murder on the Nightblade side will see you doing impressive bleed damage to enemies, while the Occultist's Vulnerability skill reduces bleed resistance and slows enemies down.

Trickster (Shaman + Nightblade)

Grim Dawn Classes

At first glance these classes are a bit at odds, since the Nightblade is all about dual-wielding, while the Shaman is more about two-handed weapons, but there are some synergies to be found here if you look hard enough. You'll obviously want to avoid the Brute Force and Primal Strike skill trees on the Shaman side altogether if you are going for a dual-wielder.

Savagery is an absolute must, however, since it lets you build up bleed and lightning damage with every basic melee attack – and you get a lot of them as a Nightblade. When you finally get high enough level, next focus the Shaman side entirely on the Wendigo Totem, which drains life from enemies and heals you and allies. Your Nightblade half, meanwhile, should probably focus entirely on dual-wielding skills and Pneumatic Burst, which increases your speed and offers some extra healing.

Occultist

Master of hexes and curses, the occultist not only excels at negatively effecting enemies, but also at dealing additional poison, acid, and chaos damage in the right circumstances.

Occultist Class

Conjurer (Occultist + Shaman)

Here we are going to actually ignore the debuffing side of the Occultist and instead focus entirely on summoning creatures to fight for us. To get this build started, focus on Summon Hellhound from the Occultist side and Summon Briarthorn from the Shaman side, then pump all your points into any skills that enhance your pets, like Emboldening Roar, Primal Bond, Bonds of Bysmiel, and Ember Claw.

Witchblade (Occultist + Soldier)

This build focuses on two opposing sides, augmenting the Soldier's weapon attacks with the Occultist's unique skills. Solael's Witchfire is an excellent choice, as it will buff your vitality and chaos damage while increasing speed.

Sigil Of Consumption and Destruction are two excellent choices on the Occultist side as well so you have some area effect abilities to bring out. Mixing in the Soldier's Cadence skill will further increase the ability of your regular attacks, and then focusing on Military Conditioning will make you a tank that stays alive much longer.

Soldier

A catch-all combat class, the Soldier offers everything battle-related that isn't focused on dual-wielding or two-handed weapons. While he has loads of excellent skills, many of his best abilities are focused just on making regular attacks more formidable.

Soldier Class

Blademaster (Soldier + Nightblade)

The ultimate melee class, mixing the Soldier's Cadence skill with the Nightblade's ability to dual wield will see you hitting hard and frequently. Zolhan's Technique works well with all the Nightblade's many melee weapon attacks, and from there you can decide whether to focus on burst/area effect skills or more defensive options to tank up and keep your health high.

Commando (Soldier + Demolitionist)

This is another class combo with loads of possibilities depending on where you focus your skills. One interesting option is to go with a pistol / shield mashup. Focus your Soldier skills on Overguard, Shield Training, and Military Conditioning for the strong defense.

Then for the Demolitionist choose Fire Strike, Cannister Bomb, and Vindictive Flame, which lets you kill from a distance but stay alive when enemies break through to engage in melee.

Shaman

A double-purpose class, the Shaman can both serve as a front-line fighter wielding massive two-handed weapons, or serve as a summoner and backup spellcaster.

Shaman Class

Warder (Shaman + Solider)

This is one of the few combos where we won't choose Cadence on the Soldier side. Instead the Shaman's Savagery skill will take its place, and it should be maxed out as soon as possible.

To focus on the two-handed weapon aspect, Brute Force and Feral Hunger are excellent options, and at the end of the skill tree, Primal Bond is a great choice for further enhancing yourself. On the Soldier side, Military Conditioning is always a plus for the extra health, while Zolhan's Technique will increase your offensive capabilities when using regular two-handed weapon attacks.

For a different take, a Warder focused on Devouring Swarm, Menhir's Will, and Wendigo Totem can actually be one of the best builds in the entire game.

Druid (Shaman + Arcanist)

While you can pull out Summon Briarthorn to make this a mage class with a familiar that fights for you, don't neglect the Shaman's melee combat possibilities.

Adding in two-handed fighting to an Arcanist's ranged spells is a killer combination. On the Shaman side, Brute Force, Primal Strike, and Storm Totem work well in tandem with the Arcanist's abilities Maiven's Sphere Of Protection and and Inner Focus.Exe emulator apk.

Necromancer

Added in with the Ashes Of Malmouth DLC, the Necromancer is your classic summoning class that will always have a pet (or more likely, lots of pets) to get in the way of enemy attacks.

Necromancer Class

Ritualist (Necromancer + Shaman)

Just about any Necro build should focus on putting out swarms of undead to deal with your enemies. If you pick the Shaman and alternate between each class's summoning abilities, you can have a never-ending horde of pets to keep the monsters of Cairn from every even reaching you! Check out our full guide to Necromancer builds right here.

Inquisitor

While the Nightblade dances across the map with two swords, the Inquisitor takes enemies down at range with dual pistols instead!

Inquisitor Class

Purifier (Inquisitor + Demolitionist)

These two fit together like a glove, as both have skills that let you pump up your base ranged damage with a firearm. Ranged Expertise and Bursting Round are must-haves, as are Deadly Aim and Storm Spread. If you want to throw in some healing and defensive capabilities, don't forget about Word Of Renewal! For a full break down on how to build the Inquisitor, head over here.

More Grim Dawn Help

Grim Dawn Vitality Damage Constellations

There are of course many other combos available, and more possible builds even within these combos we presented. So let us know what you picked and what your ultimate class build looks like!

Looking for more help with Grim Dawn or the Ashes Of Malmouth DLC? Check out our other guides here:

The sprawling grim dark fantasy ARPG Grim Dawn has seen quite a few changes both to existing masteries and loots drops in recent patches, but also with the addition of whole new masteries in the latest expansions.

With those changes in mind, its time to update our guide to the best Grim Dawn builds. If you want to take a look, our previous version of the best buildstill has some solid tips if you want to try out a Warder character, although some of that info is now outdated.

Before diving into specific mastery combos and skill load outs, first let's clarify what we mean by 'best'. Our best builds have these qualities:

• Less squishy and more survivable in most situations
• High damage output potential
• Ability to make it to later waves of Crucible or the Shattered Realm
• Can tackle the sealed dungeons
• Have the potential to defeat secret god boss Mogdrogen (with the right equipment and at level 85 - 100)

Up until the release of Forgotten Gods, one of the top damage dealing classes was easily the Cabalist (Necromancer + Occultist) with a focus on pets and chaos damage. Unfortunately, the latest patches have heavily nerfed chaos damage and items that boost chaos pet damage.

While that's still a potentially viable build just for fun, we can't recommend it as an actual 'best' build anymore at this point. Instead, we're going to look at three classes focused on melee attacks, undead pet summoning, and poison / acid damage.

Ritualist (Shaman + Necromancer)

Based on personal play style preference, this is my current favorite build, although your mileage may vary if you don't care for melee combat or using a ton of pet summons.

There's a dual focus here, first on summoning creatures to keep the enemy busy, then on two handed weapon attacks with internal trauma damage. It may seem strange to have two caster classes focused on physical attacks, but trust me, it works wonders.

Internal trauma damage bypasses armor and continues dealing damage over time, making it very helpful with big tanky bosses. In terms of devotion points, Hammer gives you bonus internal trauma, while Shepherd's Crook is a must for the bonus to pets. Be sure to pick a devotion constellation tied to whatever 2 handed weapon type you end up using (Rhowan's Scepter gives a ton of internal trauma damage for maces).

The goal with this build is to always have 8 skeletons, a briarthorn, a blight fiend, and a primal spirit to thin out the enemy while you go to town with a 2 handed weapon.

Ritualist Skills

These are the preferred skills out for the Necromancer side:

• Reaping Strike 10 (bonus main hand damage)
• Necrotic Edge 12 (bonus default weapon damage)
• Raise Skeletons 16
• Undead Legion 12 (upgrades skeletons)
• Will Of The Crypt 12 (upgrades skeletons)
• Call Of The Grave 4 (upgrade all pets for limited time)
• Summon Blight Fiend 16
• Rotting Fumes 1 (upgrades Blight Fiend)
• Blight Burst 1 (upgrades Blight Fiend)

These are the preferred skills for the Shaman side:

• Brute Force 12 (increase internal trauma damage with main attack)
• Feral Hunger 10 (heal yourself on melee hits)
• Summon Briarthorn 16
• Ground Slam 4 (upgrade Briarthorn)
• Emboldening Presence 4 (upgrade Briarthorn)
• Primal Bond 12 (additional internal trauma damage and upgrades pets)
• Conjure Primal Spirit 6

Of course there are ways to tweak the skills if you want to focus more on pets than melee attacks, as Reaping Strike and Necrotic Edge can be swapped for maxing out the Blight Fiend and Briarthorn upgrade skills instead.

So long as you buy faction items or equip items that that increase poison resistance, you'll even do very well in the harder Ashes Of Malmouth content like the Ancient Grove sealed dungeon.

There are really only two main weaknesses to pay attention to here.

First up, the only place you are really going to struggle is with Father Kymon near the end of Forgotten Gods, who will be difficult to overcome with this build on epic and ultimate modes.

Since Kymon can one shot many players with melee hits, you want to stay far away and let your pets do the work, or equip an item that gives you an extra ranged power to use while you hide in the area's entrance.

Second, while this build will see you surrounded by a horde of pets, unfortunately it doesn't have quite enough summoning potential to actually unlock the Pet Hoarder achievement.. unless you manage to find a significant number of loot drops that give you bonus summoning powers.

Dervish (Oathkeeper + Nightblade)

As a brand new mastery, the player base is still trying to figure out the best secondary class and skill load out for the Oathkeeper, and many players are convinced only Soldier or Demolitionist are viable options.

They are dead wrong (at least for the moment before any future patches).

The Oathkeeper has excellent synergy with poison and acid when paired with the Nighblade mastery. To get the most use out of this build, obviously you are going to want to equip any items that increase your overall acid damage.

In terms of devotions, make sure you pick up Rat, Eye Of The Guardian, Scorpion, Manticore, Murmur, Abomination, and Yugol The Insatiable Night for maximum acid damage output. Ghoul also works well, since it gives you some healing while attacking capability for survival.

Dervish Skills

These are the preferred skills out for the Oathkeeper side:

• Righteous Fervor 16
• Dreeg's Reproach 1 (converts physical damage to acid damage)
• Consecration 12 (bonus attack speed and defense)
• Retribution 5 (adds internal trauma damage)
• Presence of Virtue 12 (bonus retaliation, bleed, and internal trauma damage)
• Haven 2 (bonus health and shield block chance)
• Rebuke 2 (bonus damage reflection)
• Resilience 2 (increase resistance when low on health)
• Ascension 2 (bonus to all damage for limited time)
• Clarity of Purpose 2 (reduced debuff time and big resistance bonus)
• Summon Guardian of Empryion 2
• Scion of Dreeg 1 (convert Guardian's damage to acid)
• Celestial Presence 12 (Guardian gains big acid damage bonus)

These are the preferred skills out for the Nightblade side:

• Amastara's Blade Burst 16
• Lethal Assault 12 (bonus acid damage)
• Dual Blades 5
• Belgothian Shears 3
• Nidalla's Hidden Hand 8 (bonus acid damage)
• Shadow Strike 16
• Nadalla's Justifiable Ends 12 (bonus poison damage)
• Veil of Shadow 10
• Night's Chill 10 (bonus resistances)
• Merciless Repertoire 12 (big bonuses to acid and poison damage)

Switching between Amastara's Blade Burst and the Righteous Fervor attacks can result in crazy damage to just about any enemy as poison and acid eat away at health. Don't forget to summon your Guardian so he can also go out and perform area burst acid attacks!

The main downside here is a lack of crit percentage, but with how much poison, acid, bleed, and internal trauma damage you will be dealing, it isn't that much of a weakness.

For maximum damage output, don't forget to grab those Dreeg-focused faction items that add in additional poison/acid damage to whatever dual wielding weapons you are using.

Conjurer (Occultist + Shaman)

A lot of the pet builds were sadly diminished with the Forgotten Gods expansion, but this one remains viable if you play it right.

A counterpoint to the Ritualist, this mastery combo is mostly about summoning creatures and letting them do the damage, while then lowering enemy resistances so your summons can tear at them with damage types like acid, cold, lightning, etc.

For devotion points, Ulzuin's Torch is a great idea that can be bound to any of your summon skills, as it eventually gives you the chance to randomly call down a high damage meteor swarm with any basic attack. Other than that, Behemoth, Jackal, and Rhowan's Crown are all critical for the bonuses to pets.

Finally, don't forget Modgrogen the Wolf, as the final star on that devotion constellation gives you Howl Of Mogrdogen for a big bonus to your pets.

Conjurer Skills

These are the preferred skills out for the Occultist side:

• Summon Familiar 16
• Storm Spirit 10 (grant area elemental attack to Familiar)
• Bonds of Bysmiel 12 (big health and energy buff to all pets)
• Manipulation 12 (big damage buff to all pets)
• Summon Hellhound 16
• Curse of Frailty 5
• Vulnerability 10 (greatly reduce enemy resistances)
• Blood of Dreeg 16
• Aspect of the Guardian 12
• Dreeg's Evil Eye 6 (extra attack option for poison / acid damage)
• Focused Gaze 1 (increase poison / acid damage)

These are the preferred skills out for the Shaman side:

• Summon Briarthorn 16
• Ground Slam 4
• Emboldening Presence 12 (this is critical for upgrading your other pets)
• Modgroden's Pact 4 (increased healing opportunities)
• Heart Of The Wild 7 (extra health and resistance)
• Oak Skin (retaliation damage)
• Wind Devil 5
• Raging Tempest 12 (Wind Devil deals cold damage and reduces elemental resistance)
• Primal Bond 10 (bonus to all pets)
• Conjure Primal Spirit 12

Your focus here is on getting as many pets on the screen as possible that all deal elemental damage, while you then use your Occultist abilities to lower the resistances of any enemies.

The main weakness is that your character won't be directly dealing a ton of damage, and of course you don't have a ton of defense. Just make sure to always be on the lookout for any equipment that gives pet bonuses, elemental damage bonuses, or debuffs the enemy.

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Want to see what builds other players have come up with? The Grim Dawn build compendium over in the game's official forums are a great place to start.

However, keep in mind that many of those builds revolve heavily around using very specific equipment, which you may not be able to get since loot is random.

You can also check out our other Grim Dawn guides here: